Le Samourai (1967)

Le Samourai (1967)

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville

Starring: Alain Delon

Things suddenly go badly for a successful French assassin

Hitman Frank Costello is called in by the police for questioning over his most recent assassination. Costello has a water-tight alibi and the authorities reluctantly let him go but Frank’s employers are nervous after his close call with the police and Costello finds himself on the run from both the law who want him arrested and his employers who want him dead.

Low on action but dripping in style comes this highly influential movie from famed French new-wave director Jean-Pierre Melville. You can see the influence this movie, with its hitman character, had on the future movies of Luc Besson and John Woo with the similarities between Le Samourai and Woo’s ‘The Killer’ being very obvious. Both movies feature an assassin called Jeff who after completing their assignment are pursued by both the criminals who hired them and the police investigating the murder. However despite the same basic premise the movies couldn’t feel further apart in how they approach the premise. The Killer is one of my favourite action flicks and was the film that introduced me to not only Hong Kong cinema but foreign language movies in general. That said I loved Le Samourai for what it does differently to the Killer. Woo’s movie is a high-octane action movie with shoot-outs and car chases whereas this is an understated thriller where the gun battles are over in seconds and the chases are on-foot in the underground metro. The Killer is, like all of Woo’s films really, about love, friendship and bonding between men whilst Le Samourai focuses the loneliness of its main character.

In Woo’s movie and other hitman films like Leon we usually begin with an assassination and an exciting action set piece but here we instead see Frank Costello (Alain Delon) the evening of the hit carefully plan out everything to ensure he will get away with the crime. We see Jeff steal a car with the aid of a giant keyring containing keys that fit all different makes and models and we stay with him inside the car until one eventually starts the engine (nobody in 1967’s Paris locks their cars when they exit it seems). Costello takes the stolen vehicle to a Grand Theft Auto style garage where it is fitted up with new number plates and he is handed a gun in exchange for cash. Jeff next perfectly plans his alibi with help from his fiancé/girlfriend/mistress Jane and unwitting help from the other man she’s sleeping with. Then it’s time for the assassination and it happens in a club whilst a female lounge singer is crooning away, in another moment that Woo paid homage too.

In my previous review of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly I paid compliments to director Sergio Leone for his courage to have the opening ten minutes play out without dialogue and here, one year later, Le Samourai nearly goes the same length of time before a word is uttered. The following five minutes where the actual hit happens and Jeff finishes off the final touches to his alibi, by letting the man sleeping with Jane spot him leaving her apartment, are almost played it in silence too and all fifteen minutes are completely gripping. I do find it interesting that my favourite scenes in most of the movies I have reviewed thus far aside from the 007 films have been the ones without dialogue. From the Dollars trilogy’s silent gun duels to the Crop-duster scene in North by Northwest and even in James Bond’s first movie my favourite part was him quietly checking his hotel room for bugs and laying traps around it so he’d know if anybody was snooping on him. Maybe I should watch more silent movies.

Jeff’s carefully planned out crime is almost undone by the fact he was spotted by a few people in the club and so the police drag in lots of people that matched the description given of Costello, or more accurately, anybody wearing his trench coat and hat combo. This being 1960’s Paris everybody is well dressed and seemingly all wear clothes similar to Jeff, yet despite this the police chief (Francois Perier) has a hunch that our protagonist might be the man he is looking for. We then see all the fruits of Jeff’s careful planning come to fruition as the chief tries and fails to find a crack in Costello’s alibi. However Jeff’s story holds up as his lover’s lover says he saw Costello leaving Jane’s flat and it all pays off. The police chief trying to unravel Costello’s fabricated story of his whereabouts during the murder and Costello’s water-tight lie play out in a superbly tense Hitchcockian way with Jeff’s perfect assassination reminding me of the almost perfect killing in Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder.

The first half of this movie was the part that I enjoyed most but that’s not to say the rest of the film isn’t good, it is, it is for me however just a little less memorable than the first, it just doesn’t quite have tension I felt of the hit or Jeff trying to avoid being identified as the culprit. There is one scene that I really enjoyed in the latter half however and it is when two policemen break into Costello’s flat and plant a bug causing much distress to Jeff’s caged pet bullfinch. Costello then arrives back home and thinks everything is fine until he sees his pet has lost lots of his feathers and correctly figures out someone must have been in the flat and scared his pet. It’s a really fun scene, and yet another silent one, and really made me love that bird. Indeed the part of the film I was most emotionally involved with was not when Jeff has to say good-bye to his partner Jane, played by Delon’s real-life wife Nathalie Delon, but when he knowingly left his flat for the final time and paused briefly to say farewell to his loyal bullfinch. I do wonder if Jeff’s main companion being a bird was another influence on Luc Besson making Leon’s best friend a plant.

One thing I really enjoyed about Le Samourai is that nothing is ever overly explained to you. The relationship between Jeff and Jane is never clearly defined, we never get details on Jeff’s past and we never find out why Costello’s employers want him to carry out the assassination. Unlike the man John Woo’s Jeff kills at the start of The Killer who it turns out was a bit of a criminal himself, which makes us not turn against our hero, we learn nothing about the man killed in this film and don’t know if he was a good man or not.

The club singer and pianist Valarie, played by Cathy Rosier, remains a real enigma too. She sees Jeff just after he has completed his hit, but she does not identify him to the police. Jeff deduces that she is working for his employers and thus she doesn’t want him, and secondly them, caught which is why she stays mum. This is supported by the fact she is later seen in the same house of Costello’s employer, but if that’s the case then do they want Jeff to kill her too? I guess they could be tying up loose ends, in which case why assign her to the club in the first place? I suppose she was there to make sure Costello carried out the hit and if she wasn’t there someone else would be and that person might be more likely to give him over to the police? Maybe she was a lover of Costello’s employer but was having an affair with the deceased man and her jealous boyfriend wanted them both dead? I may need to watch again to see if the clues are there, but honestly I think I would rather it remain ambiguous. For what it’s worth unless I am forgetting someone in an earlier movie Cathy Rosier is the first woman of colour to have a major role in one of the movies I have covered so far and her character had nothing to do with her being black either. Well done 1960’s France!

Nathalie Delon, who plays Jane, interestingly dated both Eddie Fisher and Richard Burton after they divorced from Elizabeth Taylor (I don’t know after which divorce from Taylor it was for Burton!) and she was equally if not more beautiful than Taylor and her and Alain must have been one of the most attractive couples in cinema! Here in her first movie did well in her few scenes but husband Alain was the main story and was completely captivating as the tortured despaired hitman. The movie starts with a fake, but realistically sounding quote, from the Bushido code: ‘There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle… perhaps’ and you can see the solitude in Alain’s performance. He really is an empty shell of a man. I sort of get the impression that Jeff might have just been using Jane to try and feel something, anything, to elevate his sense of loneliness and don’t think she meant as much to him as he does to her. His apartment besides the bullfinch only contains cigarette boxes and bottles of mineral water. They say home is whether you lay your hat, but he’s flat looks anything but homely. The Bushido quote is also incredibly relevant to the plot as while I don’t know much about samurais, another reason why I should have started these reviews with Akira Kurosawa’s movies, I understand that if a samurai fails to protect their master they must commit seppuku and while the fate of both Jeff and his master is slightly different the parallels are obvious. Another fun titbit I like is that a samurai who fails to protect his master is known as a Ronin and Leon’s hitman Jean Reno, that movie’s “Le Samouari” would later star in a movie called Ronin, which we’ll get to talk about much later.

If the love-life of Nathalie Delon was interesting and the Samurai/Ronin Jean Reno connection was fun the most shocking thing I found out upon researching this movie was a case of life imitating art with Alain Delon. This movie, set in Paris, which stared Alain as he played a hitman taking assignments from gangsters was released in October 1967 and in October the very next year Delon’s bodyguard Stevan Markovic’s body was found dead in a dump on the outskirts of Paris and Alain himself, along with his real-life gangster friend Francois Marcantoni, were suspects in the murder. Like Jeff Costello Alain Delon was investigated but ultimately not charged. Marcantoni actually was charged, but was later released after questioning. Why were Marcantoni and Alain suspects? Well shortly before he murdered Markovic had written a letter to his brother which read “If I get killed, it’s 100% fault of Alain Delon and his Godfather Marcantoni.”

Markovic was a well-renowned gambler was also famous for throwing lavish high-class parties with Delon and at the parties he allegedly secretly installed cameras around the house, most notably in the bedroom, and would take incriminating photos to later use for blackmail. It was said that several people had a potential motive for wanting Markovic dead with one of the most enduring rumours being that of future French President Georges Pompidou who’s wife legend has it, was one of the people Markovic has secretly captured on film. The photos were real and later found in Markovic’s car but whether they were of Madame Pompidou or a prostitute who bore her likeness as Goerges, who was running for presidency whilst this allegation came to light, claimed is unclear. Like the opening hit in this movie the motive behind Markovic’s murder remains a mystery as the killing was never solved, but its parallels to Le Samourai are startling and it should be said that Delon had communicated with several other known gangsters who also met violent ends after meeting him. Either way the real life murder is as much an enigma as the one that opens this, very great, film.

9/10- A brilliantly cool French piece of cinema that manages to be arty without being pretentious.

Best quote: “Nothing to say?” “Not with a gun on me.” “Is that principle?” “A habit.”

Best scene: It has to be the one in the club where the assassination takes place. It’s not only suspenseful but also features great camera work like the take where we see Jeff’s face peering through an ajar door, the camera panning round to follow four guests arriving guests and following them before it pauses on Valarie playing the piano.

Kick-ass moment: Jeff working out his apartment is probably bugged by his bullfinch’s lack of feathers.

Next time on A Bloody Tomorrow we go from French new-wave to American neo-noir as Lee Marvin is out for revenge.